Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, Malene Hartmann Rasmussen, Jasleen Kaur, Ian McIntyre and Studio Silo have been selected, each receiving awards of £7,500 to realise their proposals. This resulting work will be shown in a group exhibition as part of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme at Jerwood Space in London from 8 July to 30August 2015, before touring nationally.

The initiative, now entering its fifth year, promotes the significance of making and materials within the visual arts arena. It seeks to support exceptional skill and imagination, looking broadly at how contemporary artists are defining or challenging the boundaries of what has traditionally been described as applied arts. The awards gifted to each artist afford them a rare opportunity to freely develop creative ideas central to their individual practices independently of specific commissioning structures.

For the past five years, London based artist Zachary Eastwood-Bloom has explored the relationship between digitisation and materiality. In his most ambitious project to date, Zachary will create a ceramic wall constructed using a number of hand-crafted mesh-like cubes. Together, these three-dimensional structures will form an imposing sculpture that bisects the gallery spaces, questioning viewer perceptions around the handmade and the digital. http://www.zacharyeastwood-bloom.com

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2011, Malene Hartmann Rasmussen has explored the use of alternative narratives within her mixed media works. Expanding on these initial experiments, for Jerwood Makers Open Malene will stage a theatrical installation, immersing individual ceramic sculptures in a surreal woodland setting. Combining sculpture and photography, the piece will play with viewer’s perceptions of reality. http://www.malenehartmannrasmussen.com/

Brought up in a traditional Indian household in Glasgow, Jasleen Kaur is fascinated by the malleability of culture. Drawing parallels between Indian devotional sculpture and traditional western portrait busts, she will create a trio of busts cast in marbled plastic which subvert both the material and subject from the revered to the everyday. Each depicted figure will represent a meeting point between opposing cultural ideas: Jasleen’s great-grandfather, the first family member to migrate from India to Glasgow; Edward Said, a Palestinian American who ‘lived between two worlds’; and the current Lord Napier, whose great-grandfather was a central figure in the story of British India.http://jasleenkaur.info

A designer predominantly working in ceramics, Ian McIntyre often works at the intersection where craft meets industrial production. Fascinated by craftsmen who work on an industrial scale, Ian will take inspiration from production potter Isaac Button to create a ton of white porcelain tableware, stacked in towering columns.http://ianmcintyre.co.uk

Inspired by the principles of Newton’s bucket, multidisciplinary design studio Silo – formed by Royal College of Art graduates Attua Aparicio and Oscar Wanless – has developed a unique production technique for the inertial casting of bowls. For Jerwood Makers Open, Silo will experiment with new materials and machinery which they have developed themselves, to further manipulate the casting process. http://www.studiosilo.net

The artists were selected by an independent panel comprising Grant Gibson, Editor of Crafts magazine; Isobel Dennis, Director of New Designers – the UK’s most important graduate design exhibition; and Michael Marriott, leading product designer and curator.

On the submission process and final selection, the panel commented: ‘Whittling down the finalists from this year’s record number of entries was genuinely tough. In the end the five chosen displayed a high level of technical skill combined with imagination and intellectual adventure. They are all attempting to take their practice in a new direction. 2015’s Jerwood Makers Open promises to be an exhilarating exhibition.’

On the experience of participating in Jerwood Makers Open, Shelley James – a selected artist for the 2014 award, commented: “I would like to congratulate the 2015 artists selected for Jerwood Makers Open and wish them every success, encouraging them to make the most of the incredible support of the Jerwood team to take risks creatively and technically and see their practice in a new light. Being a part of the 2014 award has given me confidence and opened so many doors, laying the foundations for my current project with scientists and mathematicians supported by the Arts Council.”

The exhibition of new works will open as part of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme at Jerwood Space, London, from 8 July to 30 August 2015, before touring the UK. More information can be found at www.jerwoodvisualarts.org

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